


The loose ends

by aussiemel1



Category: Atlantis (UK TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aussiemel1/pseuds/aussiemel1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little things remind her of Jason.  Ali is flooded with memories and regrets when she thinks of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The loose ends

**Author's Note:**

> I got to thinking about the people Jason left behind when he was sucked into the portal to Atlantis. They must have been really affected when he disappeared, they must have presumed he was dead. And then I basically made up a history for him, lol. It actually turned into a melancholic little piece, sorry about that.

Little things remind her of Jason. Little things that pluck at her heart. The Arctic Monkeys for instance. Jason used to love that stupid band and now she has to change the station whenever they come on the radio. Bond movies. So many weekends they lounged on the couch next to each other and watched a Bond movie, it feels incomplete to watch one without him.

Random things, at unexpected times.

The guy behind the counter at the local café flicks a cloth towel over his shoulder, drapes it over him like it’s a piece of clothing and it used to drive her crazy when Jason did that. Suddenly the memory is so strong she can almost see him. Jason standing beside her at the sink with a damp, disgusting towel on his shoulder. As she washed the dishes and he dried, she would playfully abuse him for it, tell him it was gross, a health hazard, and he would laugh and get deliberately close to her with that shoulder, wrap the towel around her neck when he was done with it.

God she misses him. Still. Years later, years since he disappeared and there’s still a bitter hole in her heart, an aching loss that's she's realising will never heal. Not completely anyway. Her brother, or as good as, if not in name and blood. It was what they became when Dad took him in, after Jason’s father went missing, walked away or died, no one really knows what happened, but Jason was an orphan and Dad was his godfather and so he became part of the family.

It must have been strange, those first days and months after he came to live with Dad, a strange new dynamic to get used to, but she has no memory of it now, it feels like he’d always lived there. She only saw her Dad every second weekend and at nine, when your Dad says _this boy is going to live with me now_ you kind of shrug your shoulders and go, _okay_. You don’t consider the intricacies. You don’t consider the implications. If anything she was glad of it, it meant the weekends with her Dad weren’t as dull, she had someone to play games with, someone to go to the park with, even if he was a few years younger and a boy.

She started referring to him as her brother because it was easier to introduce him that way. _This is my father’s ward_ sounded weird, and formal, and always led to further questions, the path of least resistance was brother, half-brother, step-brother, adopted brother, depending on who she was talking to and what kind of mood she was in, but by the end it was just brother, uncomplicated. And he started to introduce her the same way, _this is my sister, Ali_. They looked nothing alike, he was dark haired she was blond, his skin was olive hers was milky and she never felt the need to explain it, that could happen in any family. Their father started doing it too, keeping it simple, _these are my kids, Jason and Alison_. Nobody’s looking for a story with an introduction. Nobody needs to know about the technicalities. They called themselves family and that's what it became, it developed into something real without any thought or effort. Fortnight siblings Dad joked.

She and Jason would get on their bikes and ride, be gone for hours, sometimes the whole day. They explored a haunted house together once. More of an abandoned house really, dilapidated and unloved but word around Jason’s school was that people had died in there and ghosts roamed the halls. He had been busting to check it out. Busting. She wasn't quite so eager. But she remembers feeling quietly pleased that he wanted to explore it with her, that he had saved it for her because he could have checked it out with his mates. Or maybe his mates had said _no way_. That wasn’t an option for her, she couldn't show fear to a kid two years younger. Their Dad never knew about it, that they broke into an empty house, it was a secret they never revealed.

She had been a shitty teenager, she can see it in hindsight. Sharp tongued, smart mouthed, a real pain in the arse. She thought she was so clever, so droll. When she was about thirteen she had called Dad a dick-knuckle and Jason had cracked up laughing, he laughed until tears were streaming down his cheeks, something about the insult had really appealed to his preteen humour. _Dick-knuckle_. Of course he had started calling her that. _How's it going dick-knuckle_? So she’d started calling him dick-knuckle junior. Dad was mortified, especially when they used that language in public. And she had explained that it could be worse, they could be calling each other fuck-knuckle (she had a lovely mouth as a teenager) and he couldn't argue with that. Dick knuckle had been shortened to DK, then just D. And because he was calling her D she started calling him J and was secretly delighted that everyone thought it was short for Jason, but she knew it was short for Junior. It was their own private joke.

Throughout most of her teen years she had preferred being with Dad and Jason than Mum and her new husband, Greg. Greg was an okay guy, he tried hard, but no teenager wanted some random dude coming into their life and telling them what to do. Then there had been babies, her Mum starting another family. The first baby sister came when she was thirteen, the second at fifteen, needy and time consuming, she had resented being coopted into parenthood. Feeding, bathing, changing, settling. Dad’s place had definitely been a haven, more relaxed, an opportunity for fun.

She remembers when Jason was twelve he got a joke book for Christmas and decided to perform an impromptu standup routine. He stood in the middle of the living room reading jokes from the book - but he did it with a heavy French accent, for no real reason. He laid it on so thick that they couldn't understand a word he was saying, he had to repeat the jokes, he had to repeat the punchlines, he absolutely butchered it. And they never laughed so hard. The memory is bright of them wheezing with laughter, all of them, shaking their heads at how ridiculous it was. Dad in particular had been red faced with tears in his eyes and that just made them laugh more. Jason ended the routine by saying, “You’ve been a great audience. I’ll be here all week,” and that had set them off again.

There was a long period of comfortable predictability. On Friday nights they would have fish and chips for dinner, on Saturday they would watch Jason play sport, rugby in winter, football in summer (he was very good but she was too busy checking out the other guys on the field to really watch him) and on Sunday morning they would have a cook up breakfast (with the towel over Jason’s shoulder just to spite her). There was security in the routine, a real sense of knowing where you were and what you should be doing, which was probably good for both of them.

When Jason started bringing home girls she missed a lot of it, not living there, but Dad would sometimes call during the week and say Jason is bringing a girl over for dinner, do you want to come? _Definitely_. For Dad it was about comfort in numbers, he wasn't a good conversationalist and needed someone to share the burden. For her it was about watching the squirming discomfort, perhaps mildly adding to it. It was fantastic. Jason would eat like a starving man, trying to get through the meal as quickly as possible, leaving the poor girl to hold up the conversation. And then after the meal Dad wouldn't let the couple slip away, he would insist on a board game. It was brilliant. Dad really struggled with it, with what was acceptable behavior, where the line was and where to put his foot down. Very quickly Jason learned that he should go to the girl’s house rather than invite her back to his.

Things changed when she turned eighteen and was no longer legally required to spend weekends with Dad. Mostly she didn't. She was out with mates, dating guys, having a good time. She took Jason out with her girlfriends a few times and they loved him, even though he was a couple of years younger, they thought he was gorgeous, with his dimpled handsome and toned body. And he was fun, he was fun to be with, full of humour and charm. It made her strangely proud. Like she had something to do with it. Somehow she felt his appeal reflected well on her, she was appealing by association. But it came to an end when Jason got picked up for underage drinking. She had taken him out with her friends, sitting around in a pub, he was sipping on a pint, not drunk by any means, but it was enough to get him taken in by a humorless, overzealous cop. Just thinking about it makes her blood boil. Jason had been doing nothing wrong (apart from drinking alcohol before his time), minding his own business, enjoying the company. Dad had to collect him from the police station. Which was awkward. Dad made her pay the fine (she railed about it at the time but it was probably fair enough) and refused to let Jason go out with her again before he was legal.

Then things took a nasty turn when Jason left high school. He became friends with a bunch of tossers and went _wild_. Drugs and alcohol, petty crime and late night punch-ups. Terrible stuff. It was so unexpected. Jason had been so – perfect. No not perfect, but better, better than everyone else, sensible and steady. That he should plunge into such murkiness and unpleasantness seemed inconceivable, like the world was off balance.

She saw Jason a few times in that dark period, when she went to visit Dad, and it was shocking to see the change in him. Painfully thin and sickly pale. There was no humour in him, no spark, no sunshine at all, he had been taciturn and withdrawn and she’d wanted to punch him, wanted to punch the stupid right out of him.

And even now, the better part of a decade later, there is a deep well of guilt at how distant she was at the time, how disengaged and self-involved. She was out of home, living with a friend, studying at Uni and she would get calls from Dad asking if she had seen Jason, if she knew where he might be. She really couldn’t be bothered with it. She would text Jason, _Call Dad. Stop being a dick_. And if he answered at all it would be something charming like _fuck off_.

She is deeply remorseful about it now, of how dismissive she was of the crisis. Even though it all worked out in the end, Jason pulled himself out of that hole, ended the phase, waved goodbye to that crowd, to that life, she feels like she failed a test. She can't help thinking that she should have made an effort. She is much more affected by it now than she was at the time. You didn't have to be Dr Phil to get an inkling of where his issues lay. Dead parents. No family. Dysfunction all around him. He didn't even know his mother’s name, which was weird, she always thought that was weird. Who didn't know their own mothers name? Of course he was mixed up. Of course he had turned to drugs or whatever. Who wouldn’t?

And she had failed him. It was insidious, she hadn’t even realized it at the time. Things returned to normal, Jason returned to normal, and they had slipped back into an easy relationship, such a relief that he was smiling and joking again, the brother she knew and loved. And she had glossed over the reasons for his unhappiness, she didn’t want to confront it. If she had, maybe things might have been different, because a seed had been planted. An obsession grew in him, to _know_ , who he was, where he came from, and what had happened to his father.

When they were young she used to tease that maybe he was Princess Diana’s love child. She’d only been half joking. It would have explained the secrecy and lack of documentation, a big conspiracy. When he was about ten she tried to convince him to present himself at Buckingham Palace and declare that he was the long lost heir. Sadly he wasn't that dumb because she would have loved to have seen him do it, march up to the guards and demand entry. But even at that tender age he could see the flaws in the logic, knew the pieces didn’t quite fit. Dad had told her to stop in no uncertain terms. Stop mentioning Jason’s parents. And so she had. But now she thinks what he really needed was the opposite, someone to theorise with, someone to investigate with, someone to tell him that looking for his father at the bottom of the ocean was crazy.

It had always bothered her that Dad never officially adopted Jason. She couldn’t understand why. There was no doubting that dad adored him, Jason was the son he always wanted. Jason was probably a better son than his own genes could have produced, athletic and handsome, fearless and strong. But as close as they got, and they were as close as any father and son, there remained an unbridgeable distance between them because Jason had a different name, and he never called Dad _Dad_ , it was always Mac. It was an incompleteness to the relationship that never made sense to her. She wonders if Jason understood it.

Three years since he died and it had gone so fast. And it had also gone really slowly. It’s taken a toll on their father, he’d never really recovered. It wasn’t just grief that buried him but guilt as well, because he’d been right there when it happened, standing on deck while Jason drowned. While Jason _drowned_. Or presumed drowned because they never did find his body. God. It was awful to contemplate, no wonder Dad couldn’t recover. How could anyone come to terms with that, the what ifs and the if onlys. Dad was a different person now. More muted. More melancholy. Maybe she was as well. There was always a whisper in her mind - _I wish he was here_. Whenever something happened in her life, something momentous there was that whisper - _I wish he was here_.

She can’t remember ever telling him that she loved him and that hurts now because she did, and she thinks he knew that, but she wishes she had actually said the words rather than let it linger in the background. There are a lot of things she wished she had said. And done. They had talked about exploring Europe together. _We should go here. We should do that_. They never did any of it. He was so young and he was gone.

It's hard not to sink into despair when she thinks of Jason. She doesn't want to, she wants to remember him with fondness and warmth but it gets swamped by regret and bitterness. And tears. She's drinking a latte, in a coffee shop, surrounded by people, and big fat tears are rolling down her cheeks. She swipes at them quickly, impatiently, it doesn't achieve anything, it doesn't change anything.

The feelings have dulled, there’s no denying. She can go long periods, weeks, without thinking about him. And when his memory does rise the response isn’t as sharp. Quiet tears, which don’t take her breath away like they used to. She’s looking forward to a time when there are no tears, when she can reminisce without misery, when she can look at a photo without having to look away. But then she thinks maybe its right that she should be so affected, maybe it honours him that she can’t get over his death, that her life is a little less shiny without him.


End file.
